Three suggestions for you, the first being clematis armandii, evergreen largish leaves with lovely flowers, once it gets going it will screen the area in question quite quickly, another idea would be to grow up some pyracantha, evergreen, beautifull white flowers and lovely berries in the autumn winter, plenty of thorns though and so you wont get any intruders climbing over it, responds well to hard pruning, another choice would be to train a Ceanothus along the fence lovely foliage which is evergreen and a sea of blue flowers early summer, this really does look the part given time and clipping it back to shape will give you a lovely looking fence with penty of privicy.

There are some nice variegated ivies which would do the job too. pyracantha, as julien suggests, would be ideal if you want to help the birds and bees. Ceanothus, in my experience, is relatively short-lived although beautifully dense.

Great thanks, pyracantha sounds like a good option. The neighbours have removed a row of leillandi -i must be the only person in the world who sees this as a bad thing!

I know exactly what you mean. There was a new leylandi hedge along the drive here when I came 30 years ago and it has always looked very smart, but I have had to have it removed because a crack was appearing in the garage wall and the insurers blamed the hedge. My house, which is on a corner, is now open to two roads and I feel like a goldfish in a bowl.

Same here, its awful and the garden has seems to have lost its depth